Shared Pain, Half Suffering

I stopped going to the club's Saturday run. During base training I was perfectly happy running at 8:30 or 9-minute pace (though it has speeded up recently - a few of the boys have obviously increased their fitness levels), but now I need more specific workouts for the marathon. I was all set to run entirely on my own again when Michael called me and asked if he could run with me.

I think he was slightly taken aback when I told him I intended to run 1.25 mile (2k) repeats rather than a continuous tempo run at slightly slower pace but was still happy enough to join me. He still had the 10k from Tuesday in his legs and I wasn't sure how much I had recovered from my 5k at the same day, so it was a bit of "let's see how this goes". We agreed to run back- and forwards on the same stretch of road as that would enable us to run all the repeats together even if one of us fell behind. Target pace was about 6:15 per mile, and we set off together. Initially I found it tough to get into a rhythm and continuously checked the Garmin, trying to tune into the correct effort. The first one was definitely too slow, especially considering that we had the wind on our back, something we definitely noticed on the second one. Running the same pace right into the gale was never going to happen and we had to settle for about 6:35 pace, which still felt tougher than the faster first repeat. The third one went better, Michael asked a couple of times if we were running slower than during the first repeat when we were actually running faster. We would have done 6:15 had the repeat not ended right at the top of a hill. Michael pulled up just short of a mile into the fourth repeat and had enough, and I did a fifth one on my own on the way home.

I had never done workouts like this with company - I'm already looking forward to the next one.

Sunday's run was another long run. I initially intended to run 20 miles but cut that short a little bit when I remembered that I had already run a race on Tuesday and a fairly tough workout on Saturday. Instead of running on the very hilly road around the lake I ran a couple of loops through Killorglin, which should be matching the marathon elevation profile to a certain degree. The conditions were rather rough with strong winds (very strong at times) and quite a few rain showers. I had to keep slowing down during the first 10 miles as I kept speeding up to 7-minute pace when I was not paying attention, but then intentionally accelerated for the last 5 miles. The intention was to run in the 6:30s (planned marathon pace) but the legs weren't quite up to it (the wind certainly did not help) and I ended up with 6:42, just a tad slower. Considering that I had started with already fatigued legs, I was happy enough, though.

This starting to get tough. The real marathon training has clearly started.

5 Jan

11.5 miles, 1:20:47, 7:01 pace, HR 157
   5x2k at 6:23, 6:37, 6:18, 6:36, 6:11 pace

6 Jan

18 miles, 2:09:31, 7:11 pace, HR 148
   incl. 5 @ 6:42 pace (HR 163)

Weekly Mileage: 70+